Valued at $145,700,000, the deal will see Verizon provide USPS with infrastructure upgrades, including a transition to cloud capabilities
Verizon Business this week entered a 10-year contract with the United States Postal Service (USPS). Valued at $145,700,000, the deal will see Verizon provide infrastructure upgrades, including a transition to cloud capabilities supported by real-time reporting, monitoring and administration, which the carrier said will accelerate USPS’ integration of artificial intelligence aimed at improving customer satisfaction and engagement.
Specifically, Maggie Hallbach, senior VP of Verizon Public Sector and president of Verizon Frontline, claimed that the partnership will make the USPS’ customer service network smarter more efficient. “It’s no secret, today’s consumers expect immediate, personalized support. That’s a very high bar when you’re serving tens of millions of customers. Our digital solutions will relieve some of that administrative burden so USPS can focus on providing an invaluable service for our country,” she continued.
Verizon will also deliver “ongoing physical infrastructure enhancements for host servers, storage arrays, and other equipment,” as well as help the USPS move a multichannel platform supporting email, SMS and chat. “Verizon’s solutions will help eliminate the need for premise infrastructure, software licenses, or hardware, thereby reducing the burden on USPS’ IT personnel and lowering operational costs,” stated the carrier.
As a result of this agreement, Verizon will support 80 million annual interactions for USPS with 4,500 contact center agents across 10 business units. The carrier was first awarded the USPS Managed Network Services (MNS) contract in 1997 and since then, claims to have established for the organization one of the world’s largest private networks. In 2006, the pair extended the existing contract, due to expire in 2008, through to 2010. Then, in 2012, Verizon was named the postal service’s prime contractor as part of another six-year agreement worth $186 million.
